“Nothing I can hold you to, of course.” The smile widened and the faint light in the room reflecting off his fangs. “But there’s a connection now, little warrior. And sometime soon, you’ll be glad of it. By the way, I heard stories of several runaways. Groups of them, actually. You should focus your investigation to the south.”
Way to derail the conversation, I thought sourly. Runaways. Blowing out a breath, I shook my head. “To the south?” Just where to the south? The Keys? Cuba? South America?”
“Hmmm.” As he uncoiled off the bed, I tensed.
He closed the distance between us and tugged on the hem of my shirt. “I’m glad you’re dressed. You don’t need to sleep in the skin around one like him. Save that for me.”
I smacked at his hand but he was gone before I made contact.
And I woke up to find Damon standing over my bed.
Groaning, I grabbed a pillow and flopped over onto my belly. “What the hell, you jackass?” I muttered, shoving my face into the pillow.
Damn it. The dream was still echoing in my mind. Loudly.
Jude had seen my dreams. My nightmares. My fucking grandmother.
Groups of runaways.
In the south.
And now Damon was in here, staring down at me.
“You weren’t breathing right.”
I pulled the pillow over my head. “I’m breathing now,” I grumbled.
South. Was Jude jerking me around or had he really heard something?
“Your heart rate was too slow.”
“I was willing myself into a catatonic stupor. The only way I can really get any sleep with you in my home.”
“What was going on?”
Swearing, I flung the pillow away and twisted into a sitting position. “Would you leave me alone?” I glared up at him and wished that I wasn’t able to see so clearly in the dark. It was a handy skill for a born killer, but still.
Seeing in the dark made it that much easier to see that he was, indeed, naked from the waist up.
And…wow. I hadn’t seen that in the dream. He had a tattoo on his chest. A vivid, rather tribal looking creation that spread up over his entire right pectoral, across his shoulder and curving down over his right bicep. I stared at it for a second while some part of my brain tried to wonder how it was possible for him to even have a tattoo—tatts weren’t that much different than scars, implanting the pigment under the skin…shifter bodies rejected shit like that.
So how was it even possible?
Then he crouched down, eyes on level with mine. The storm clouds, for once, weren’t so brooding and angry, but the look on his face was just as disturbing to me as the anger, although for different reasons entirely. I’d rather he be angry with me, damn it.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked softly. “You sounded like you were having a nightmare, but then it just…stopped.”
“Apparently the leave-me-alone thing falls on empty ears,” I muttered. Fighting free of the blankets, I clambered out of the bed and stormed toward the bathroom. “Just what in the hell did I do to deserve having a death sentence on my head and a couple of psychotic cat shifters breathing down my neck, on top of all the other shit I’ve dealt with?”
I made into the bathroom and slammed the door. Magic shimmered as wards settled into place. Flipping the lock, I grabbed a spare pillow and a blanket out of the closet. I had a safe place in my office. And another one here. It was the bathroom, the smallest room in the house, the easiest to secure. Not the nicest place to spend the night, but I could do it.
As I settled down in the bathtub, I called my sword.
I could hear him moving around, heard the door shut. But I didn’t bother getting up.
I hadn’t stopped having the nightmares until a few years ago.
When they’d gotten really bad, I still ended up in here, certain that I’d awaken and find Fanis standing over me.
This was one place I almost felt secure. Miserable enough to some, I figured.
But for nearly thirteen years, I hadn’t ever had a bed to sleep in. After my mother died, I’d been pretty much treated as a stray dog in my grandmother’s house. And the dogs had been fed better.
After I’d fled Aneris Hall, I’d been so busy running, I ran until I was too tired to go any farther so I dropped where I was. Often, I hadn’t even had a warm